InTheTrees

I used to love my long irons but now my 6 is the longest I carry. My handicap is lower now, too. Hit what works for you.

The only unusual features of my bag are: (1) I carry 15 degree and 16 degree fairway woods. I hit the Callaway 15 degree 225 and the Adams 16 degree 210 with a higher trajectory. The Adams works great if I need the height. (2) I don't carry a 5i or 5h. When I got my new irons the gaps filled in so going from 6i to 4h worked well for me.

It sounds like you're seeing what more efficient energy transfer can do to ball speed. Hitting in the sweet spot of the club more efficiently transfers your swing speed to the ball, so you get more ball speed (and thus more distance), and likely less side spin. When I was getting fit for my clubs, some shaft/head combinations gave me a better smash factor (ball speed/swing speed), so even with a slightly slower swing speed I got more ball speed and more distance. Those clubs fit my swing and I was getting squarer hits in the sweet spot. Of course, if we could all swing faster and still hit the sweet spot on the correct path ...

I had a 3 iron shaft break up inside the grip, just below where my right index finger rests. It broke when I started my downswing so it was like I was swinging a rope. I whiffed and the floppy club finally broke into 2 pieces as I was holding it at the finish and trying to figure out what had happened. As you can guess, we had a spirited discussion about whether or not that counted as a stroke.

My home course has 1 tee box with a slight but noticeable left to right downhill slope. The hole is a dogleg left par 4 and the prevailing wind is from over the left shoulder of a righty so drives into the right rough are common. In the course's defense, it's an elevated tee box on the side of a hill and no other boxes on the course are sloped, but that sloped box makes an already tough hole even tougher.

I agree with @bkuehn1952's strategy. I'd probably hit something like 6i or 4h for my second shot and hope that gave me a reasonable wedge approach. I'd put a lot of weight on hitting the correct part of the greens at Augusta, not just hitting the greens. That means not trying to hit greens with a 3 wood, but laying up for a reasonable wedge or pitch.

I'd reload on the tee. I trust my full swing more than my possibly twitchy half swing and that first shot I dunked gave me some practice.

Shot 77 (39/38) with a double and a bogie on par 3s. Took an extra club for the wind but couldn't commit to hitting them, so dumped one in a bunker and one in a pond. Need to stop hitting shots while having second thoughts about the plan.

Shot a scratchy 81 on a windy, misty day. No time to warm up and hit my opening drive OB, then hung on for an up and down round. It's been a strange spring here, with cool mornings and cloudy days. Bermuda is still dormant where it's usually growing by now. Sun and heat is on the way, though.

I probably could hit the fairway more often with a hybrid, but the yardage I'd give up would make that a bad trade in most cases. I often miss the fairway with driver but still have a more than reasonable shot to the green. For example, in most cases I'd rather have a 7 iron from the rough than another hybrid from the fairway but 40 or 50 yards farther out. Other times the hybrid off the tee might not get me to a dogleg or carry a hazard, so once again the risk of a fairway miss is much better than the shorter hybrid alternative. With regard to 0 hdcp players and hitting fairways and greens, take a look at the pros stats. They don't hit every fairway and green. In fact, they often sacrifice driving accuracy for distance when they think they are likely to be in a playable spot with a shorter club. They have infinitely more control than I do and are much better able to execute a plan, but they still miss. Of course, there are times I hit 3 wood or hybrid off the tee and there are times in retrospect it's obvious I should have. But there are other times I hit my 3 wood into just as much trouble as I would have hit my driver. The "safe" club isn't always so safe. The chart @RandallT posted above looks pretty reasonable to me. Based on my guess that I hit within a 7 yd. radius of the pin about 50% of the time from 100 yds,, I'd guess my average (mean) distance would push out to 40 or more feet when I average in the other 50% of my shots. These would include some pretty bad misses, and my average score is somewhere in the low 80's rather than the 95 in the chart. And don't worry. I didn't take your comments wrong. No offense taken. Good luck in the Stableford match. I play in a Stableford league most Mondays. It's a fun format.

I have one and agree that it's helpful. I use it as a warm-up aid and I also swing it in the backyard for practice. It helps me with tempo - I tend to get too quick at the top, and I can't do that with the OW. It also gives me a good workout in a short time. I'm generally not a training aid user but I'm glad I got the OW. It just looked like it might work when I saw it, and it did.

Many thanks @DaveP043. I might have eventually figured that out, but you made it a lot easier!

I'm right in the middle of your low handicap category. It's hard to avoid thinking only of the great shots and guessing what a reasonable average for me would be, but here goes: From 100 yds. out, I'd guess my average is about 20 feet at best, so let's say a 7 yd. radius. 100 yds. for me is my 48 degree wedge. I feel great if I have a 10 foot putt or less, OK inside 20 feet, and not too bad as long as I hit the green or can putt through a little fringe. Keep in mind that I'm quite capable of blading it into the next county or chunking it into the trap or the pond. A shot like that would significantly distort the calculation of my average distance from the pin, so when I say a 7 yd. radius, I'm thinking more of a median distance than a mean distance. (I apologize for the statistical detail.) With my driver, I'm happy if I hit the fairway. My home course has narrow fairways with a lot of tight landing areas and out of bounds threats. I haven't tracked it for a while, but the last time I checked a bad day was hitting less than 50% of the fairways and a great day was hitting 12 of 14, so about 85%. Average was closer to 60% or 65%. I'm not sure what that means about shot radius, but given the width of my fairways and my hit rate, a 15 yard radius is a very good day for me. I'd hate to guess at my average driver dispersion. I'd probably be way off and it would also be depressing. It's hard to get an accurate figure for that drive into someone's back yard or the one that nails a buck on the other side of the game fence. I've done both. Finally, if I'm on the range hitting shot after shot under the same conditions, I can get a pretty tight pattern with most clubs. It's when I've got 1 shot at it with changing lies, wind, elevation changes, and my own mental gyrations for each shot that things get interesting.

In fact, I am the same guy (gentleman may be stretching it a bit) responsible for Fairway Words. It's good to hear from you, Brian, and thanks for the kind words.